


Some Slip Through Your Fingers and Onto the Floor

by SweetStugLife



Series: A Cord of Three Strands [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome, Body Dysmorphic Disorder, Cissexism, Empathy vs Sympathy, F/M, Gender Dysphoria, Grief/Mourning, Intersex Peggy Carter, Intersex Steve Rogers, It's not quite as cute as it seems, Jewish Steve Rogers, M/M, Native American Steve Rogers, Oneida Mythology/Cosmology/Religion, Perisexism, Project Rebirth, Steve and Peggy are such Awkward Penguins, Steve has a crush on Peggy and he doesn’t know what to do, Supersoldier Serum, Wilson's Disease, at least not yet, pre-polyamory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-07
Updated: 2019-03-07
Packaged: 2019-11-04 17:24:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,235
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17902361
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SweetStugLife/pseuds/SweetStugLife
Summary: Steve’s not sure how to feel about the things the serumdidn'tchange.Neither is Peggy.





	Some Slip Through Your Fingers and Onto the Floor

**Author's Note:**

> Yet another mini-series! I seem to enjoy these. Anyway, this is based on the song “[Some Days are Better than Others](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=mQj0hzwCjpI)” which is about...well, exactly what it says on the tin. I thought a song that refers to multiple days might warrant multiple stories, hence, a mini-series. 
> 
> **TW that Steve and Peggy both experience (internalized) perisexism and body dysphoria/dysmorphia.** As always, Steve and Peggy’s thoughts and opinions reflect my interpretation of Steve and Peggy’s personalities and circumstances; they _should not_ be seen as representative of the intersex demographic as a whole, or as healthy attitudes...at this point in their lives they’re still struggling to accept themselves. 
> 
> It’s my understanding that the relationship between the trans and intersex demographics is...complicated/nuanced, so I thought I would cover my bases and tag for cissexism just to be safe. If you’ve read other stories in this series you know that Peggy unknowingly misgenders a coworker in this one, so the warning for cissexism goes for that, as well.

If there's any scrap of a good thing to be taken from today, it's that the post-transformation physical was focused on collecting blood samples and did not require Steve to show anyone any skin beyond rolling up his sleeve. Steve waits until after dark to look at the full-length mirror in the room he’s been assigned, and it takes him awhile to get his shirt off.

He stares for a very long minute...maybe a very long several minutes. He closes his eyes, and opens them; the image before him is exactly the same as the one his mind's eye had recorded. Eidetic memory; Dr. Erskine had predicted that, and that's something to be grateful for. Never mind the fact that he won't ever be able to forget the man's face as he died: the numb shock, the relief that he'll be united in death with the family he's sure is already there, the fevered hope that Steve would be—

Steve wipes his eyes with the inside of his wrist, sets his jaw, and looks harder.

He'll probably never have to worry about his chest again, thank God. It's been a couple years since he's had to wear a lacer—Neo-Hombreol took care of what his natural skinniness couldn't, in that respect—but there had always been that fear...but unless he spontaneously generates extra fatty tissue sometime in the future (which, even considering everything that's happened today, is still slightly too fantastical an idea for him to give credence to), he's too _broad_ now for anyone to think he'd once had to hide even a hint of a bosom.

His brings his hand up, hesitates, and decides to start at the front of his shoulder, dragging it down a few inches, and then across. The skin depresses under his fingers a little, but aside from that, the expanse is firm. He grabs at his pectoral, tries to squeeze it, and the _muscle_ stops him from getting a purchase comparable to what he could get back when he was thirteen.

An exhale comes out of him in a short, half-giddy huff, and he closes his eyes. _This_ , God, if he'd had _this_ back in '34, '35, he might not have caught Bucky's hand every time it got too close. _This_ was a look he'd be proud to sport. _This_ was something he'd be glad to let Peggy tap her fingers on—

He screws up his eyes, and tries to push that thought away. He'd been just barely aware of her doing that, just... _touching_ him like that; if he'd been paying attention he would have stopped her, definitely. Even after Steve started the Neo-Hombreol, he didn’t really care for Bucky touching him there. And if Bucky wasn't allowed, then no one was, or ever would be.

He opens his eyes again, and studies the mirror, a little more resolutely than before. His hands go to his ribcage—there's actually only been a few times in his life when he could count his ribs, but if the muscle there is permanent, he probably won't ever be able to again—and then to his stomach, which has the most definition he's ever seen outside of an ad; more than he was beginning to think was possible. If he slapped today’s stomach with yesterday's hand, that hand would have been out of commission for awhile.

Holding his hands out in front of him leads him to looking at his arms; the forearms are broader, and the _biceps_ , holy crap...when Peggy had walked into the examination room, expression shrouded in urgency and grief, her eyes still noticeably widened.

Steve pinches his face together; bites his lip. It's not _her_ reactions that he should be thinking about. He’s just...he’s grasping for some idea of how Bucky will react when they see each other again, that’s all. It’s not often that a guy has to worry about his boyfriend seeing him naked for the first time _twice_.

And on that note.

Steve’s not sure he _wants_ to look, but the morbid ball in his stomach is urging him to, along with the glum realization that he’s gonna have to pee or change clothes at _some_ point. He already knows the transformation hasn’t affected everywhere, he can feel it...well, he _hasn’t_ felt it, to be more accurate. But maybe...

It takes a few more minutes of _just maybe_ s for his hands—God, why are they _shaking_ ; this is stupid and nothing that Steve hasn’t done a billion times before—to peel off his pants, and then his underwear, and for him to make himself look in the mirror.

Steve’s been to the Met a few times. He had a teacher in high school who had wanted to be an art historian, and actually arranged a field trip there for any interested students. He’d been enjoying himself up until they got to the Ancient Greek Art exhibit and the handful of other boys who came on the trip started snickering at the statues of male nudes.

“Yes, yes, I know,” Mr. Sarto said. “In fact, the ancient Greeks believed that...um...” He glanced sideways at the larger contingent of girls who had come, and blushed, “large...male... _apparatuses_ were undignified. Mastery over the self—the, ehm, _entire_ self—was a paramount masculine virtue in that society. And yes, you're seeing this reflected in the art, um...here.”

 _Mythical Greek god or hero_ isn’t a bad thing to look like, Steve supposes. It’s certainly a nicer spin on his condition than _undervirilized_ , or _saris chamah_ , or _proof that eugenics is necessary_.

Steve turns away from the mirror.

_“So this is gonna...this is gonna fix everything’s that wrong with me, doc?”_

_“It is going to save everything about you that needs saving.”_

So this was not something about him that “needs saving.” All right. Steve can live with that, _has_ lived with that all his life. Lacer and testosterone and hours spent at the Barnes’ piano teaching his voice to pitch lower notwithstanding, there’s nothing _wrong_ about his body. He should be proud of it, or at least not ashamed of it. He just thought...he just _hoped_ that he wouldn't have to keep spending his life protecting it from other people's ridicule.

Oh well. At least the skills he's spent twenty-four years perfecting won't go to waste. He’s already mastered the art of the strategically angled quick-change, not that anyone he’ll be around for the conceivable future will be looking at him too close, except for Bucky—he hopes. And Bucky will...

Bucky will do as he did before: widen those grey-blue eyes to impossible dimensions, gape at Steve like he’s never seen anything half so captivating, and accept him exactly as he is.

Despite the ache lodged in his chest Steve has to smile. His father's parents had taught him long ago—they still had the car, so Steve must have only been five or six at the time—how _vital_ that was, on the first warm day in March, when Grandpa would drive them to find a maple tree out of the way enough that Aksot could unwrap a few cigarettes and burn the contents without being harassed.

"Steve, when you're old enough," Aksot had said, keeping him away enough from the fire that neither flames nor smoke could hurt him, while Grandpa quietly circled the area, "I hope you choose someone who'll do things like this for you."

"I gotta say, buddy, I don't really believe all that myself," Grandpa explained later, when it was just him and his grandson, and Steve chattered at him about how Aksot told him that the thunderstorm they had a week ago had woken the trees. "But it's important to your Aksot, so I make sure no one gives her any grief about it, ever."

It was a different dynamic from his other grandparents. Bobeh and Zeydeh had known each other their whole lives. They spoke with not only the same accent, but with the same cadence; they chose similar words, and getting a scolding from either of them was equally as uncomfortable. They knew the same stories—could tell them for each other, if one were feeling too sluggish to talk—and laughed at the same jokes. Hell, they even liked and disliked the exact same foods. Thinking on it now, Steve can't recall them ever having a meaningful difference of opinion on _anything_. 

He wonders which paradigm could be called better: to be accepted, over and over, or to be _that_ thoroughly understood. Both sets of his grandparents had been deeply in love and happy with each other, he knows that, so maybe it’s wrongheaded to think in terms of _better_ , or maybe it depended on the couple. After all, there aren’t a whole lot of circumstances that he and Bucky share, but—

Someone knocks on the door, and he nearly jumps out of his skin.

"Steve?"

It's Peggy, and Steve suddenly feels like he's hanging upside-down off the rope bridge in front of all the other Rebirth candidates again.

"One second, I'm...I'm not...decent." He cringes as soon as the words leave his mouth. Like he ought to be inviting Peggy to imagine him in such a state.

"Tell me when," she responds, as Steve hastily plucks his clothes off the floor. He yanks his shirt on roughly, followed by his underwear, and nearly falls over when one of his pant legs tangles as he's trying to shove his leg through it. He stumbles as well on his way to the door, so Peggy is greeted by a flushed, discomfited face when he finally opens it for her.

"Is there a problem, ma'am?"

She bites back, but doesn't quite hide a smile. "No, I...my plane isn't leaving for another few hours. I wanted to see how you're faring."

"Oh. Oh, well I'm..." He steps back, pulling the door with him, and beckons Peggy inside, "I'm...all right, I guess."

"It's been quite a day," she continues, and though she doesn't turn her head, Steve catches sight of her gaze reflecting in the mirror. 

"Y-...yeah. I guess. It has."

"I thought you might appreciate some company," she says, turning on her heel. "I remember the first time I...lost a friend, to the war."

He doesn't know what to say to that, and in the small silence that reigns Peggy takes a seat in the one chair in the room; her head is faced towards him, but in the dim light her eyes seem to be looking away.

"And I thought I ought to apologize," she says, half-clearing her throat. "For the little...proposal I made, to Senator Brandt."

_"If I may point out, Fred Clemson is hardly the only Hydra spy in the country, and if I may also point out, there are quite a few women within the SSR who have backgrounds in performance work. Suppose that we arrange for them to tour 'round the States..."_

"Hey, no, don't apologize," Steve says. "I mean, I've only had a couple weeks at Lehigh, and now I've got...I've got a whole new body to get used to, I should probably get some...get some more training. Advanced training."

"You'll get it, believe me. I've a friend, Kay Howlett; I'm recommending her for the tour. I think...I do believe you'll be able to keep up with each other."

She smiles a little strangely, but Steve decides to nod rather than question. "Kay Howlett. Got it."

"She helped me, when..." Peggy looks down, and picks a tiny piece of lint off her skirt. "A few years ago, when we got Dr. Erskine out...out of Germany."

"Oh, so you..." She looks up when he hesitates, and he wonders if he's seeing a sheen over her eyes. "You knew him pretty well?"

"Well enough, I suppose," she says with a shrug, as Steve drifts into his own seat on the bed. "We...did spend an awful lot of time together, comparatively. He..." Peggy tilts her head slightly back, blinking at the ceiling. "We had to pretend to be a family, he and Kay and I, while we were getting through Germany to our rendezvous point. So I suppose we...tricked ourselves, into getting attached. He had daughters, you know."

"I know," Steve murmurs, throat painful and dry. “He said. Last night.”

"A son, too. He said we...he told Kay and I that we reminded him of them, of his girls. I wonder if he saw you as..."

"Guess we'll never know," Steve informs the floor, after a beat.

“I hope he’s with them,” Peggy says quietly. “If they _are_...deceased, I hope they’re together somewhere.” She fidgets in her seat, pushes her hair back. “Is that something you...that you all believe in?”

“Well the _official_ position goes something like this.” Steve raises both hands to either side and effects a huge shrug. Peggy titters, and his newly enhanced hearing picks up how wet that sound is. “But...I dunno. I think there is. My dad’s parents, they weren’t...” That’s gonna take too long to explain. “ _They_ believed in that, in going to Heaven after you die. And my grandmother used to tell me that...people who had passed, their spirits would come back and visit you, too. And I think I...think I’ve felt her near me once or twice since she died. So...”

“Well, if you _are_ about at the moment, Dr. Erskine,” Peggy addresses the room. She lifts her arm like she's raising a glass, and clears her throat to get Steve's attention; he hastens to do likewise. "To you. And the lives you’ve saved. Sorry I don't have actual champagne."

"Clink," Steve says, moving his hand like he's tapping their glasses together. Peggy giggles, and they both mime sipping from their glasses.

"So how are you feeling?" Peggy asks, bringing her hand back down to her lap. "About your new...physique, I mean."

"...Different?" Steve says, and they both laugh. "I don't really know how to describe it."

“Is it a good different?”

“Yeah, pretty good, for the most part.” That’s not a lie, at least. “So are all tall people afraid of hitting their heads when they walk through a doorway, or is that just me?"

"Depends on the doorway," Peggy chuckles. “How are you on your feet?”

“Ah...I think the expression is _clumsy oaf_?”

Peggy smiles. “Don't feel too self-conscious. It can take awhile, to find your sea legs.”

“Oh, you speak from experience?”

“Well, yes,” Peggy says, with a slightly puzzled face, and the joking expression slides off Steve’s own. "...Dr. Erskine didn't say anything."

"I guess not," Steve says, a little slowly.

Peggy regards him for a moment, frowning, before she reaches into her breast pocket. “Suppose he wanted to protect my privacy.” She pulls out and unfolds a small square of paper. "Here." She stands. "I wanted to show you this, regardless; you probably wouldn't have seen it, even if he _had_ mentioned it..."

She crosses the room to sit next to him on the bed, and motions for him to take the paper from her hands. It's a photograph, and it takes Steve a few seconds to realize he's holding a picture of Peggy. The woman he's looking at, laying clothed but not blanketed in a hospital bed, is definitely shorter than the one beside him, but more concerning is the sunkenness of her eyes and cheeks, the scrawniness of her arms and chest, juxtaposed against a grotesquely round, protruding abdomen and swollen legs pockmarked with fingertip-shaped indents. 

"I think I was half a minute from having a seizure, when they took this photograph."

A phantom tremor ripples faintly through Steve’s arms, and he takes half a second to catch his breath. "What was wrong?"

"I had Wilson's disease," she says, with a nonchalance he can tell is on shaky ground. "I was in liver failure, essentially. I was...after Kay and I brought Dr. Erskine in, I started getting...confused. I would forget things constantly. It hurt to _think_ , if that makes any sense at all. And it was hard for me to make myself...get up and go, as it were. I could hardly do even paperwork; I was always so tired. And you can’t see it in the photo, but my skin got yellow, and my hands...” She holds her right hand up, affecting a tremor. “Never mind doing paperwork; I couldn’t hold a pen.”

“Peggy, that...” sounds so familiar. “I’m sorry. This must’ve been awful for you.”

“Nearly dying isn’t much fun, no.”

“What happened? How did you...how did you get better?”

“Well.” Peggy takes the photo out of Steve’s hand, and puts it back in her pocket. “The serum you received today...you’re not the first one to get it.”

“I know. He said, Dr. Erskine said that Schmidt got the first version of it.”

Peggy nods, folding her hands in her lap. “That was Erskine Alpha. After Kay and I brought him to the SSR, he started working on an updated version immediately. He had a sample of the Beta version ready about the time I was about to...shuffle off the mortal coil. Now there were... _some_ ,” her thumbs push, agitated, against each other, “who thought we shouldn’t waste such a dear resource on an already half-dead woman. Surely there was an officer heading to the front lines who’d need it more. But Dr. Erskine insisted. _She saved my life_ ,” she says, with his accent, and his hand gestures, " _I am going to save hers._ "

"He made a good choice."

"He was an excellent judge of character."

It crosses Steve's mind to tease her for her lack of modesty, but he barely notices that thought when the realization that she'd paid him a compliment is so huge. It's still buzzing around his head when she stands up.

"Erskine Beta didn't just keep me alive. It...here. Stand up, please."

Steve scrambles to his feet, and Peggy crouches to slip her hand under the bedframe. With an upward flick if her wrist, she lifts the foot of the bed off the floor as if she’s lifted a paperback; Steve gapes as she walks forward, pushing the bed before her with her fingertips, and then walks it back, setting it down with no sign that any of this had been the slightest bit labor intensive. 

“I’m not as strong or as fast as you, yet,” Peggy says, flexing her fingers as Steve flounders for something to say. “Your serum, Erskine Gamma...he made a few improvements. And you had the Vita-Ray machine to speed the process up.”

Steve recalls the eye-searing light, and the feel of his bones lengthening, his muscles expanding; every nerve in his body making it crystal clear how displeased they were about this process...

“Peggy, you gotta be in so much pain.”

She smiles at him, watery but wide, but he’s so focused on the thought that his blush is completely automatic.

“It’s not constant, thankfully,” Peggy says. “Most of the time I feel hale and healthy. Just every once in a while, it...” She lifts her hands to make two fists, and mimes wringing out a wet towel between them. “It’ll stop one day. _You_ hit an endpoint, so I ought to as well.”

“God, I hope so,” Steve says, just stopping himself from grabbing her hand. “‘Cause that, changing like that was...”

_“Shut it down! Shut it **down!** ”_

“I know. Believe me, I know.”

Steve isn’t sure what else to say, and he’s spared having to come up with something when Peggy opens her mouth, to take a breath, and shifts her weight between her feet. 

“There was...something else I wanted to talk to you about.”

“Oh, well...shoot. Absolutely. I’m all ears.” Steve sits back down on the bed. Peggy glances at the door, and Steve’s heart skips a beat when she crosses the room to push it closed.

“It’s about...forgive me. I’m about to be unbearably awkward with you.”

“Hey, _unbearably awkward_ is my middle name. Names.”

Peggy smiles, but her eyes cast sideways, and then heavenwards. “So. You know that in my position, I have access to your...medical file.”

Steve hopes that his new grecian facade hides the fact his stomach just evaporated. “I didn’t know that, actually. I mean. I suppose it makes, it makes sense. Does make sense. Because of your. Position.”

“So I _know_ about the...issue you have, with...the hormonal problem.”

“All right. Okay. All right.” 

“It’s fine, Steve. It’s all right. I’m...” She forces a laugh. “A variation of the Erskine serum is not the only thing you and I have in common.”

A series of noises attempting to be words run out of Steve’s mouth like lemmings off a cliff. He wasn’t aware that a person could blink so much, so quickly. 

“Though in _this_ case, my version is more advanced than yours.”

“I—how—I’m sorry, what...I’m sorry, what do you mean? I don’t...I mean, I’ve never…” _met someone else like me._ A vague, purely intellectual part of him had known that there had to be others, or there wouldn’t have been any literature on his condition, but he’d never even thought to dream that the concept could materialize right in front of him. 

“Well.” Peggy clears her throat. “As I was growing up, there were certain...developmental milestones the other girls were reaching, that I wasn’t. So when I was sixteen, my mother took me to a doctor, and the doctor did a few tests, and we found out that I...I wasn’t supposed to have _been_ a girl, in fact.”

“But you...do you feel like you are?” Steve asks. “In, in here.” He taps his fingertips against his temple. “‘Cause I’m…”

Peggy bites her lip, and nods. “Yes. That’s how I...that’s how I feel.” 

“Then you are,” Steve says, with even more vehemence than he’d been planning. 

Peggy closes her eyes, biting her lips again until they morph into a smile. “I know. Thank you.”

“So it’s, it’s the same thing as with me? Just...more?”

“With the caveat of me not being any sort of medical professional, I believe so,” Peggy says, taking her seat next to Steve on the bed again. “Impaired ability to respond to androgens is a rather specific condition for a body to have.”

“So what’s that mean for, for you?” Steve asks, and immediately thinks better of it. “I’m sorry. That’s none of my business. Don’t, you don’t need to answer that.”

“No, it’s all right. I wouldn’t have brought it up if I weren’t willing to talk about it with you.” Peggy rocks on her hips, smoothing out an imaginary wrinkle that spans her skirt. “There are some...organs that most women have, that I don’t. And others that aren’t as developed as they ought to be. Unfortunately that will make marriage a difficult endeavor for me.”

Steve tries not to turn so red that she can’t pretend he doesn’t know exactly what she means. Even if a man and a woman sometimes had sex the way two men did, there’s a third route that a couple would expect themselves to be able to take, and if Peggy doesn’t have the necessary room—

 _You and her could probably make it work,_ his brain supplies suddenly, with a nonchalance that seems to border on malicious, and he can practically _feel_ his face skipping red entirely and heading straight for purple. 

“It also means that childbirth is...beyond my grasp,” Peggy continues, giving no sign that she sees what _precisely_ Steve is thinking about. Not that that means anything; her poker face is notoriously exceptional. 

“I can’t have kids either,” Steve blurts out, ashamed to be thankful for this excuse to think about something else. “I mean, I can’t… _give_ anyone any kids. Well I can’t do _either_.”

“I-I figured as much,” Peggy says, almost laughing; she looks down at her lap, and cups her hands over her knee. “I think you might’ve had it harder than me. Looking at me from the outside, you’d never be able to tell there was something… _unusual_ going on, but…I’d think it was different for you.”

“Um. Sorta? It was...I mean a few people outside my family know, but I managed to keep it under wraps, for the most part. And it’s not like...I mean, everyone treated me like a boy. I don’t think there’s been anything I wasn’t _allowed_ to do as a boy, besides...be the Messiah, and stuff like that. Y’know.” He brandishes a finger clumsily at himself. “ _Ours_ , I mean.”

“Really? Because of this?”

“Yeah. And…” Bucky flits through Steve’s mind; Bucky at twelve years old, whispering _Love you, Steve_ as they lay next to each other on the floor; Bucky six hours before he was supposed to report for departure, pulling Steve into bed, burying his face in Steve’s neck, and choking out the same. “There’re a couple other reasons, too.”

Peggy waits for the other reasons to be forthcoming, and when they aren’t, she nods. 

“Can, can I ask?” 

“You can.”

“Why did you...come and tell me all this?”

“Oh. Well…” Peggy laces her fingers together a few inches away from her midsection, pointing and flexing them as she speaks. “I was...I was still a bit cognizant of my surroundings, when I was as sick as I was in that photograph. Dr. Erskine did come talk to me about what he expected the Beta serum to do for me. And...I suppose this will sound very spoiled of me...I remember hoping that after I took it, it might...I might wake up _normal_. Enhanced, obviously, but…”

“Normal.”

She nods. “I didn’t know what all Dr. Erskine had told you, obviously, and I didn’t want to say anything in the car, in front of the driver. But I thought that…” She quirks a half-smile. “You and I are the only two _decent_ people who’ve got an Erskine serum, in any case, and we have...two versions of the same, same condition. I don’t know how many people _you_ feel comfortable talking to about all of this, but I haven’t many confidants myself.”

“Yeah, there’s...there’s really only…” Steve’s stomach fills up with lead, spreading to his chest and his jaw. “The only person I’d talk to about any of this is overseas right now.”

Peggy nods. “So I…” She straightens her back, but she actually starts to duck her head before she makes herself look him in the eye. “I just wanted to make sure you were all right. And that you didn’t feel...alone.”

He puts his arm around her before he even thinks about it, and it takes more than one thought of the more than one reason that he should let her go before he actually does. 

“Thanks. Thank you, Peggy, for...checking on me. And for…” he debates it, whether saying it aloud is wise or not, and the switch flips inside him without his fully confident say-so, “for trusting me, I guess. Telling me all this, about you.”

“Well. I _also_ am an excellent judge of character.” 

Steve ducks his head. 

“And for what it’s worth, I think you’d make a _fabulous_ Messiah.”

Steve barks out a laugh, shaking his head. He vaguely thinks to deflect the compliment in words, but the phenomenon of getting it twice is too incredible to be sidelined so. “Bucky said that, too.”

“Who is that? He sounds perceptive.”

“He’s…Bucky’s my friend, he’s...what’s the word you used. Confidant.”

“The one overseas?” 

Steve nods, lips and stomach clenching all at once. “We met when we were eleven. Been inseparable ever since.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. Hell, he wouldn’t even let me _live_ alone, after my mother died. Practically dragged me to live with him and his family.”

“So I take it you couldn’t avoid discussing this with him.”

“No, he already, I already told him about it, before that.” He’d kinda been forced to, but regardless… “Bucky...Bucky’s the kind of person you can tell _anything_ to, and you never have to worry about it. He's like that, he’s…” _good, and loyal, and out there risking his life while I’m..._

“He sounds like a wonderful friend,” Peggy says, gently. 

Steve looks her over, from her cascade of brunette curls to her piercing brown eyes to her impossibly, unignorably red lips, and he wants... _everything_ so badly that he feels like throwing up. 

“Better than I deserve.”

“Now _that_ I don’t believe,” Peggy says briskly, standing up. “And remember, I’m an excellent judge.”

It’s a bitter laugh that answers her, even though it’s directed at the floor. “I hope you’re right.”

“I most always am.” He hears more than sees her shift on her feet. “I...should probably head back to my room now. Make sure I haven’t left anything important unpacked.”

“Oh, yeah, absolutely,” Steve says, rising to his feet. “Don’t, don’t let me keep you.”

“I wouldn’t,” she says, but with enough good humor that they both smile. “Well. Look after yourself, while you’re on tour.”

“I will,” Steve says, walking ahead of her so he can grab the doorknob. “You too, while you’re in Europe. If you happen to see Schmidt, give him a right hook from me.”

“Gladly.” Peggy steps directly in the path of the door, staying him from opening it. “And, Steve?”

“Yeah?”

“Feel free to write me, if you’d like. If you ever feel the need for… _another_...confidante.”

She steps back without breaking eye contact, and Steve opening the door is the most automatic action of his life. 

“Good night, Steve.”

He’s too paralyzed to do anything more than stutter “‘Night” in response; he can’t even watch her leave. He’s frozen until he hears the click of her heels fade into the distance, and even then he doesn’t dare look into the hallway; he pushes the door closed with his hands crossed behind his back, and leans against it until they start to go numb. 

“Y’know if you actually _are_ here,” he says, to his grandmother, or to Dr. Erskine, or to anyone who would care to be listening, “I could maybe use a little wisdom right about now?”

His window rattles with the passing of a strong breeze, and he holds his breath, but after several seconds no spirit makes their presence known, and he’s forced to breathe again. 

“Right. I guess I should actually make a proper offering first. Do c-rats work for you?”

No sign of a reply this time; not even another gust of wind. He straightens up, still somewhat hoping for an answer, and the reflection of his movement in the mirror catches his eye. Even across the room, his new height and breadth take up almost the whole of the mirror, filling the glass with over six feet of hard muscle and long, dense bones.

He wonders, then, how in this moment he can still feel so small. 

He wonders also, when the two most beautiful people he’s ever met—the two who know him better than anyone else can—have both gladly offered themselves to be known and confided in, he can still feel so alone.

**Author's Note:**

> Because I’m not an expert on the rules of who counts as saris chamah, when it’s decided, if and how the status can be changed, not to mention the particular religiocultural context (i.e. Conservative Judaism in 1910s-40s New York), I’m not sure if Steve would definitely, halachically be considered such. But I figured that, at the very least, it’s an idea he would have struggled with. 
> 
> Read more [here](http://www.sojourngsd.org/blog/sixgenders), [here](https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/gender-identity-in-halakhic-discourse), [here](http://www.sojourngsd.org/blog/saris), [here](http://jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/5904-eunuch), [here](http://www.come-and-hear.com/yebamoth/yebamoth_80.html#PARTb), and [here](https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Judaism/Eunuch.pdf).
> 
> I couldn’t find a definite Conservative statement on the Messiah | Moshiach from before 1988, but if we consider Maimonides to be the expert, the Messiah | Moshiach [will sire a male heir](http://beta.moshiach.com/index.php/item/the-rationalist-approach-to-messianism)...something Steve is incapable of doing, so in at least one very traditional view, Steve is precluded from Messiahship because of that (and because he’s uhhhh had sex with another man; that would also disqualify him in those same traditional eyes. The slight syncretism with Oneida cosmology in Steve’s religious beliefs is probably strike three?).
> 
> If _you’re_ more familiar with what the early 20th century Conservative views on the Messiah | Moshiach are, and Steve’s lines about his ineligibility don’t make sense as 100% sincere statements, you can read it as him word-vomiting facetiousness about _anyone_ excluding him on the basis of his anatomy/fertility/sexuality, if that’s better. 
> 
> (Peggy and Bucky, as Christians, don’t really know what being Moshiach means; they just know that it’s a good thing/high honor and don’t like the idea that Steve might be excluded from it. Steve is aware of this, and is nonetheless charmed by their indignation on his behalf.)
> 
> The ceremonies Steve remembers/references are the [Maple Tree Tobacco Burning and the Community Death Feast](https://oneida-nsn.gov/our-ways/our-story/ceremonies/).


End file.
